THE MAN WHO DISAPPEARED

ANNALS OF COMMUNICATIONS about former Times reporter John McCandlish Phillips, Jr. John McCandlish Phillips was the principal speaker at the April 12th funeral of Times Frankfurt bureau chief Nathaniel C. Nash. Nash had been a member of Phillips's Pentecostal church group, the New Testament Missionary Fellowship. Phillips himself was a former Times star reporter who gave up journalism to focus on religion and church. Gay Talese said Phillips was the "Ted Williams of the young reporters." His stories often focussed on forgotten people, and he was best known as a stylish feature writer. Religion came into his life in 1952, while he was in the Army. After he was discharged, he says, God told him to get a job with the New York Times. He began as a copyboy, and in 1955, was promoted to reporter. He became an overnight star at the Times after he published a satire in Times Talk. The most influential person in Phillips's life was Hannah Lowe, an elderly woman he met in 1961, in Miami. They started the New Testament Missionary Fellowship together. Phillips's most celebrated story was written in 1965, on Daniel Burros, the 28-year-old leader of the state Ku Klux Klan. Phillips wrote that Burros, who had been a ranking official of the American Nazi Party, was Jewish. Burros shot himself after the article was published. As the '60s wore on, Phillips became obsessed with a story he wanted to do on a circus clown named Otto Griebling, whom he considered an artist. His Fellowship church was under attack from parents claiming their children were being brainwashed by the group. Religion began to enter his writing more and more, In 1973, after 21 years at the Times, Phillips retired at age 46 to focus full-time on his Fellowship. He still wrote for the Times occasionally after that on a freelance basis, but soon stopped altogether. Now, he is general manager of Thomas E. Lowe, Ltd., a small religious publishing house that he founded with Hannah Lowe, as well as the elder and administrator of his Fellowship.

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As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.